My First real attempt at fiction...Hope you like it...
He had to remind himself to start breathing again. He felt his legs swaying and before they could give way, he had to steady himself on his old reading desk. He could not believe this was happening to him again. Correction, he did not want to believe this was happening to him again. It just could not be true. The Window was open again.
Fifteen years ago, for Akash, the world had been the cruelest place to live in. He had never been able to understand why he was put on this planet. Was it merely to survive a few years of torture form his parents? Only to outgrow his childhood and then survive a few years of alone, awkward, confusing adolescence? For a long time, he had resigned his life to the fate that awaited him.
When he was 23, he escaped from his childhood and his parents and settled in a suburb of Mumbai. He was working as a receptionist at a law firm. He had placed his reading desk below the solitary window in his one room apartment, which looked out to another building across the lane. The wall opposite his window had exactly one window. It was blue and worn out. And it had always remained closed since he moved in.
One day, he found it open. He wasn’t a peeper, but curiosity got the better of him and he pulled back his curtain to look. Standing inside the room, with her back to the window, was a girl. She was about 5’7” and had long, straight, jet black hair that reached her slender waist. She was busy unpacking a few boxes and arranging her things. Suddenly, she stiffened, and turned around to directly look into his eyes. She had sensed him watching her, and she had a perplexed look on her face. But he wasn’t looking at her face. He was looking into her eyes. Even from 6 feet away, he could clearly make out the dark blue of her eyes.
Suddenly, he thought as if the world had opened up for him. All he wanted to do was look into her eyes and not stop looking. He was holding his breath for a long time, and the dull ache in his lungs brought him back to reality and he took in a deep breath, almost a sigh. Only then did he notice that she was staring at him with the most inquisitive expression on her face. She had the hint of a smile on her lips, asking a question. He quickly lost his nerve and moved out of the window. He didn’t dare look out of the window all day. That night, his dreams were not sweaty nightmares; they were about blue skies, and oceans.
The next few days, she was all he could think about. And yet he never had the courage to go talk to her. He knew he was falling in love with her. He traveled with her every day to-fro work. He would steal quick glances at her but never when she was looking. He was happy to just look at her eyes, they still mesmerized him.
Just as miraculously as she had come into his life, she disappeared. He didn’t see her on the bus one day. When he got home, the window was shut. And for 2 days, it had remained closed. He asked around and found out she had moved out. She was getting married. He sat at his desk, staring into nothingness, mildly aware of the blue of the window in his vision. He started feeling the slow ache in his heart again. And then it hit him. The window had closed on him.
He had no way of searching for her. All he remembered of her was her sweet smile when she caught him looking at her, the dark, deep blue of her eyes, her hair falling around her face. He remembered the last time he had seen her on the bus, she seemed like she wanted to tell him something. He could make out that she was agitated. But she didn’t. Now he knew what she wanted to say. If only he had spoken to her.
Slowly, but amazingly he picked his life back up. He moved to another city and started another job. For years, he could not forget those eyes. But he learned to live with it.
Today, he had come back to his old apartment. Wishfully, he had looked out of the window. And there she was. Sitting at her desk and writing. She intuitively looked up and saw him. She looked different now, older and wiser. But her eyes were the same, deep blue. He looked into them and saw the smile in her eyes before he saw it on her lips.
The Blue Window had opened for him again.
P.S. Thanx to Annie for helping with the editing. :P..You are such a sweetheart!!!!
